F****** hell I would like to think he survived,but that looked bad.I`ve worked with lots of dozer drivers over the years & alot of them have no fear,almost to the point of lunacy.But then i`m not a seasoned dozer driver,& i`ve never taken a dozer to its limits.

Joined: November 2008Posts: 6346Location: South WalesHas thanked:295 timesBeen thanked:331 times

The poor chap died in this accident. About 15 years ago a D9R pusher owned by Blackwells was on the hillside about half a mile from my home.It nearly fell 200 foot after a culvert collapsed on the old tip. I have a photo of the dozer,fleet number 12. It was saved from falling by a Komatsu excavator and a D8K.it could have been bad, as the bottom of the hill there are four houses.Just shows how carefull you have to be operating plant on difficult sites. Looks like that machine lost its footing on very rocky terrain.Martyn

Blinkin' 'eck Liebherr fan, it pretty obvious what went wrong! You only had to see the 5 tonne bolders racing down the mountain and breaking up to know how steep that was! What was the doughnut doing dropping the tractor over the face? He could have bailed out when it paused at the top. If in doubt get out! And if he wanted to go down why did he not use the route up? I'm sorry he's dead but that was no coast to the bottom and on a rocky/sandy mountain you aint never going to get any real grip on a slope like that!!!!

I must say that what really mystifies me about this is what on earth was a dozer driver trying to accomplish up there in the first place? Err why what how etc....................?Funny how accidents occur when folk actually learn the machines limits!!

Joined: November 2008Posts: 6346Location: South WalesHas thanked:295 timesBeen thanked:331 times

I was thinking the same Jeremy,perhaps a cut for a roadway down the hill.See how he kept his blade up. I would have kept it low down to improve stability and make sure that you had a good footing for the machine.I often think,that regular operators need CPS cards etc for site,but anyone can hire a machine,and with little or no expertise, atempt to operate it on a private diy job I remember seeing a video of a chap in South America I think.He cut a roadway up a mountain with his dozer.A massive job which took great skill.Can anyone remember seeing that programme ?Martyn

sorry if I sounded stupid, it’s clear what went wrong, I meant we will never know the real reason a man with 35 year experience would take such a risk. There may be 100 reasons to why this happened that looking at the video could not tell us,

I was in a similar situation years ago when I drove a D9 High track, working in a sand quarry in Midlands, this particular day I started on the top to start back filling the old sand quarry. this consisted of pushing all the over burn and stock piles back into the pit below, the pit had a shear drop of about 200-300 feet, so all was going well I was about 4 hours into the task. I had a nice mound built up below me. for anyone who has drove a dozer will understand the working, unlike a excavator the tracks are driven via a gearbox and you can select you 3 forward gears and reverse also the break is a useful tool but not always used and the throttle in push down for power down and to throttle up take your foot off the pedals.

so to get the material down as far as possible you push right to the very edge and let the blade over the edge, so just as you get to the front of the tracks to the edge select reverse lift blade and go back, now here is the not too smart part as time goes by and you get into rhymed you don’t use the brake just got from forward into reverse and back away.

but on this on occasion when I selected reverse noting happened and I carried forward and over the side, so now I was looking as a 300 foot drop and all I did was drop my blade as far as could and drop the ripper behind and hold and hope for the best, what saved me was the stock pile of sand that I had been pushing in for the past 4 hours so had created a ramp of sorts, so after a very fast dive the dozer found its centre and it was a 10 second ride of my life I ended up buried in the pile at the bottom and managed to kick open the door and clime out, I lay on the sand it was very sunny day and just lay looking up at the sun and it was so weird the pit was so quiet and then I heard a few shouts from above, I was a luck guy.

it took us three days to dig the big girl out and when I got her back to the workshop and pulled out the gearbox we stripped it completely down to find a small O ring was the cause of the gearbox failure and not being able to select a gear.

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